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This is Tel Aviv1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Itinerary | Home
Up until the late 1980s, Tel Aviv was a massively provincial town, and as a 10-year-old tourist, I remember there being nothing to do here but build sandcastles and visit historic sites built almost exclusively from crumbling limestone. And the ice cream was vanilla and gross. There was little food culture, and fashionable people bought their clothes abroad. So I share the tourist’s sentiment. In the past few years, even the skyline has changed dramatically. The Philippe Starck-designed Yoo project – two gleaming high-rises in north Tel Aviv’s wealthy Zameret Park – is big stuff for a city built on Bauhaus. Steak houses and sushi have also reached critical mass, surely a sign of a city on the make. And a city with buzz means the return of those who left. Many of them, in addition to the local young bucks making their millions in high tech, are settling in Neve Tzedek, which, just 20 years ago, was a slum. Rents have exploded, and today this is a popular place to eat and drink, shop and spa. As I sit on the sunny terrace at Café Mia amid the Beautiful People with their lap dogs and young couples with $1,000 orange Bugaboo strollers, I can see that this is a young city (the average age here is 36) and that it has money. With youth and shekels comes a vibrant cosmopolitan energy that has transformed the place. And the best of the best is homegrown. From the pomegranates (juiced at stands dotting the city) to the cucumbers and tomatoes (found in my daily breakfast of chopped Israeli salad), the fresh fruits and vegetables are the culinary envy of chefs the world over. Israelis typically eat organically, locally and seasonally and, due to the prohibitive cost of imports, always have. Starbucks came and went within two years because you can get better coffee on any corner for cheaper. (I defy you to find a bad espresso in Tel Aviv.) The beautiful chocolate truffles I’m eyeing in the window at Café Mia aren’t from France; they’re from a cool new chocolatier in the nearby Galilee. The fashions, too, are delicious and appealing. I did very well at Fashion Fridays at the Dizengoff Center, where young designers from local boutiques roll their racks into a temporary semi-enclosed area in the lower level of the mall, the place becoming a riot of mauve jersey wrap dresses and golden-laced tops. As I finish lapping up my latte in Neve Tzedek, I think were it not for the swirls of cigarette smoke and the Hebrew being shouted into cellphones, I could be in any chic city anywhere. And then the token “security surcharge” on my restaurant bill reminds me exactly where I am. Just beyond the renovated warehouses and velvet ropes lies the wooden boardwalk and then the rocks and sand and spray from the sea, not five metres from the patio of Comme il Faut Café, where I’m eating fresh seafood tossed with roasted cauliflower, green beans and a Peruvian chili and za’atar sherry vinaigrette. It’s a flat-out delicious salad that whispers restrained elegance. Around us, the women are sun-kissed, their eyes heavily lined in kohl. The naval promenade becomes like a seaside catwalk for them as they languidly stroll in heels. Admiring their confidence, I later invest in an eyeliner to call my own, and for the remainder of the trip people address me only in Hebrew. (I’m secretly thrilled.) The men are dark and manly with wandering eyes and chestnut hair that stops just short of being full-on curls. I want to touch them all. |
